“I didn’t take it,” she said suddenly, her voice loud in the silence. “I never saw it before I found it in my bag. I gave it straight to Callandra. What else could I have done?”
His hands closed over hers, surprisingly warm when she was so cold.
“I know you didn’t take it,” he said firmly. “And I shall prove it. But it will not be easy. You will have to resign yourself to a battle.”
She said nothing, struggling to keep the panic under control.
“Would you like me to inform your brother and sister-”
“No! No-please don’t tell Charles.” Her voice was sharp, and unconsciously she had jerked forward. “You mustn’t tell Charles-or Imogen.” She took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking. “It will be hard enough for him if he has to know, but if we can fight it first…”
He was frowning at her. “Don’t you think he would wish to know? Surely he would wish to Offer you some support, some comfort?”
“Of course he would wish it,” she agreed with a fierce mixture of anger, pity and defensiveness. “But he wouldn’t know what to believe. He would want to think I was innocent, and he would not know how to. Charles is very literal. He cannot believe something he cannot understand.” She knew she sounded critical, and she had not meant to, but all her own fear and anguish was in her voice, she could hear it and it was out of control. “It would distress him, and he could do nothing to help. He would feel he ought to visit me, and that would be terrible for him.”
She wanted to explain to Rathbone about her father’s suicide when he was ruined by a cheat, and their mother’s death shortly afterwards, and the shock it had been for Charles. He had been the only one of the three children to be in England at the time, James having died recently in the Crimea, and Hester being still out there nursing. The full weight of the disgrace and the financial ruin had fallen on Charles, and then the grief afterwards.
Of course Rathbone knew something of it, because he had defended the man charged in the resulting murder case. But if he had not known the full extent of her father’s disgrace, she was not willing to tell him now, or to expose and relive her father’s vulnerability. She found herself sitting silently, risking his thinking her sullen.
Rathbone smiled very slightly, a small expression of resignation, and a kind of bitter humor.
“I think you are judging him ill,” he said calmly. “But it is not of great importance now. Perhaps later on we can discuss it again.” He rose to his feet.
“What are you going to do?” She stood up also, too quickly, knocking herself against the table and scraping the chair legs loudly on the floor. She lost her balance clumsily and only regained it by holding on to the table. “What happens next?”
He was close to her, so close she could smell the faint odor of the wool of his coat and feel the warmth of his skin. She longed for the comfort of being held with a depth that made the blood rush up to her face in shame. She straightened and took a step backwards.
“They will keep you here,” he answered, wincing. “I shall go and seek Monk and send him to leant more of the Farralines and what really happened.”
“To Edinburgh?” she said with surprise.
“Of course. I doubt there is anything more we can discover in London.”
“Oh.”
He moved to the door and knocked. “Wardress!” He turned back to see her. “Keep heart,” he said gently. “There is an answer, and we shall find it.”
She forced herself to smile. She knew he was speaking only to comfort her, but even so the words themselves had some power. She clung to them, willing herself to believe.
“Of course. Thank you…”
They were prevented from saying anything further by the clang of the keys in the lock and the wardress’s appearing, grim-faced and implacable.
Before calling upon Monk, which Rathbone viewed with very mixed thoughts, he returned to his offices in Vere Street. He had learned little of practical value from his interview with Hester, and he felt more emotionally drained than he had foreseen. Visiting clients accused of crime was always trying. Naturally they were frightened, shocked by arrest. Even when they were guilty, capture and charge took them by surprise. When they were innocent the sense of bewilderment and having been overtaken by events out of their control was devastating.
He had seen Hester angry before, burning with injustice, frightened for other people, close to despair, but never with the fear for herself. In a sense she had always been in some control of events, her own freedom not at stake.
He took off his coat and gave it to the clerk waiting to take it from him. Hester was so impatient of fools, so fierce to charge into battle. It was a characteristic most alarming, and highly unattractive in a woman. Society would not tolerate it. He smiled as he imagined how it would be greeted by most of the respectable ladies he knew. He could visualize the expressions in their well-bred faces. And it alarmed him, as his smile broadened with self- mockery, that it was the quality in her which most appealed to him. Gentler, more conventionally behaved women he found more comfortable, less challenging, less disturbing to his well-being, his assumptions and certainly his social and professional ambitions, but they did not remain always in his memory after they had parted. He was neither troubled by them nor invigorated. Safety was beginning to cloy, for all its seeming advantages.
Absentmindedly he thanked the clerk and walked past him to his office. He closed the door behind him and sat down at his desk. He must not allow this to happen to Hester. He was one of the best barristers in England, he was the ideal person to protect her and get this absurd charge dismissed. It irritated him that he would have to use Monk to find out the truth of what had happened, or at least enough of it to prove Hester’s innocence-and reasonable doubt would be far from satisfactory-but without facts he could do nothing.
It was not that he disliked Monk, not entirely. The man had an excellent mind, courage, and a kind of honor; even the fact that he was abrasive, often ill-mannered, and always arrogant was not of itself a strike against him. He was not a gentleman, for all his confidence, his elegance, his fine diction. The difference was indefinable, but it was there. There was a certain underlying aggression in him of which Rathbone was always aware. And his attitude towards Hester was intensely irritating.
Hester’s welfare was the only thing that mattered at the moment. His own feelings about Monk were irrelevant. He would send a messenger to fetch him, and while he was waiting for him to arrive, prepare sufficient money to send him to Edinburgh on the night train with instructions to remain there until he could learn precisely what jealousies, pressures financial or emotional, existed in the Farraline household which had produced this ridiculous accident of circumstance.
He rang the bell for the clerk to come, and when the door opened, drew breath to speak, then saw the man’s face.
“What is it, Clements? What is wrong?”
“The police, sir. Sergeant Daly is here to see you.”
“Ah.” Perhaps the charge had been withdrawn, and he would not need to send for Monk after all. “Ask him to come in, Clements.”
Clements bit his lip, his eyes troubled, and withdrew to obey.
“Yes?” Rathbone said hopefully as Sergeant Daly appeared in the doorway looking solid and sad. Rathbone was about to ask if the charges had been dropped when something in Daly’s face stopped him.
Daly closed the door behind him quietly, the latch clicking home with a snick.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rathbone.” His voice was light and very clear. In other circumstances it would have been pleasant, in spite of the London edge to the accent. “But I’ve got some rather unpleasant news.”
The words were very mild, and yet Rathbone felt a sense of dread out of all proportion to the situation. He breathed in, and his stomach lurched. His mouth was suddenly dry.
“What is it, Sergeant?” He managed to sound almost as calm as Daly had, completely belying the fear inside him.
Daly remained standing, his blunt face filled with sorrow.
“Well sir, I’m afraid Mr. and Mrs. Murdoch weren’t totally satisfied with the way poor Mrs. Farraline died, it being so unexpected like, and they called their own doctor to make an examination…” He left the words hanging in the air.
